Generation of plasmon-polaritons in epsilon-near-zero polaritonic metamaterial

Abstract

In this paper, we study the generation of plasmon-polaritons in the epsilon-near-zero nanorod polaritonic metamaterial by using nonlocal effective medium approximation (EMT). The results indicate that the nonlocal EMT is the simplest and most accurate approach to describe the characteristics of plasmon-polaritons at the epsilon-near-zero regime (e ≈ 0) in the polaritonic metamaterial. In contrast, the Maxwell-Garnett effective medium approximation is considered to be the most general method to study the generated plasmon-polaritons in metamaterials. An additional plasmon-polariton is found in the polaritonic metamaterial through the nonlocal EMT, which could not be found with the Maxwell-Garnett EMT. A flat longitudinal wave-number of the excited plasmon-polariton occurs in the angle of incident light ranging from –20 to 20°, leading to the collinear group-velocity vectors, and its energy will be carried in one direction. The findings can be used in some applications in optical communication.

Keywords

• polaritonic metamaterials
• epsilon-near-zero metamaterials
• cylindrical composite mediums
• optical nonlocality